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Strengthening the institutional and operational frameworks of urban transport
Urban transport should serve as the structural factor that will determine whether Ghanaian cities become an engine of or a burden to the country’s economic transformation. Cities such as Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale have been unable to keep pace with the growing demands for mobility to connect people to jobs and social services and businesses to other businesses, customers, and international markets. If nothing is done, these cities’ competitiveness and inclusion will be heavily undermined. To become functional, they urgently need investments in transport systems and coordinated urban planning. Otherwise, the cost of congestion will cancel out any productivity benefits the cities can deliver.
Attempts at reform must focus not only on the rapidly growing capital city of Ghana, but also on its intermediary cities. As in many other countries in the region, most of the attention and funding on urban transport have been directed at the capital city. however, intermediary cities such as Kumasi, Tamale, and Takoradi are in acute need of attention and funding to respond to their growing needs. These intermediary cities are growing faster than Accra, and yet they are hampered by very limited data and clear neglect of urban transport. Intermediary cities in Ghana have the potential to become intermediary hubs between rural areas, the capital city, and external markets, which would enhance the country’s economic inclusion and reduce pressure on Greater Accra.
stronger institutional and operational frameworks could serve as the foundation for change in the complex urban mobility arena. Only the efforts of capable, well-coordinated, and committed institutions at different levels of government can resolve the complex multisectoral problems linked to urban mobility. Meanwhile, high rates of motorization, urban sprawl, and insufficient access and demand management are the root causes of congestion, air pollution, high-energy consumption, road accidents, and social exclusion, among other things.
Because institutional changes are seldom easy, the government needs to define a clear action plan for an overall institutional reform of urban mobility, supported at the highest level. The following recommended actions are based on past experiences in Ghana and in other cities around the world.
Reinvigorating the institutional and operational frameworks would enable institutions such as GAPTE, the transport departments in MMDAs, CUT, and UTAC to assume the obligation, direction, motivation, and capacity to deliver. Key institutional building blocks of urban mobility were created during implementation of the Ghana Urban Transport Project (GUTP). however, these mechanisms and institutions were neither empowered nor properly funded, and they never developed their full potential. GAPTE itself was never properly funded, and its functions were compromised from an early stage, leaving it to perform the role of operator of buses, rather than its core functions. Transport departments in MMDAs were built up as part of GUTP. however, much of their human capacity was lost over time because of lack of attention and funding.
In particular, there is an urgent need to disengage GAPTE from the business aspects and liabilities of the Aayalolo routes to avoid GAPTE’s
imminent collapse. The collapse of GAPTE would mean losing one of the major actors in the institutional reforms during the implementation of GUTP. In the short term, the government should arrange to resolve the financial liabilities incurred to date and facilitate a steady source of funding. such measures would allow GAPTE to bring its staffing level to full capacity and develop its role in regulation, permit issuance, and coordination of travel demand analyses, transport planning, and ticketing and pricing.
Greater Kumasi would benefit from the launch of institutional and regulatory coordination mechanisms between MMDAs, learning from the successes and failures of GAPTE. The uncontrolled urban sprawl of Kumasi has extended beyond the boundaries of the Kumasi Metropolitan Area (KMA). During the implementation of GUTP, it was expected that Greater Kumasi MMDAs would establish an entity similar to GAPTE. however, this entity never materialized. Greater Kumasi should draw from similar experiences in Greater Accra and other cities in Africa to define institutional mechanisms that would bring coherence and coordination of public transport to the metropolitan region.
At the local government level, mandate, authority, and responsibility should be embedded in the amendments to Act 936, Legislative Instrument 1961, and any individual legislative instruments established by the MMDAs. It is recommended that urban mobility matters be mandatory for metropolitan and municipal assemblies as well as any district assemblies notified by the minister—especially any district assemblies in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA).
Transport departments need to be staffed, empowered, and held accountable to MMDAs to ensure results. MMDAs should staff transport departments to their capacity with suitably qualified staff, and they should define and implement capacity-building requirements for all transport departments. Intervention by local governments to develop suitable indicators to cover the scope of transport departments will enhance those departments’ accountability and delivery.
Establish a formal basis for coordination and ownership of reforms
Previous efforts to improve urban mobility have revealed it is essential to establish both a clear understanding of the ownership of the reform program and a formal basis to coordinate across multiple stakeholders, in addition to engaging, coordinating, and mobilizing MDAs and MMDAs to take common action.
Ultimately, ownership must rest with the country’s president and cabinet. In Ghana, ownership of reforms is a national issue that has defied all previous efforts to resolve it. MMDAs and MDAs need to work together to resolve the mobility crisis in Ghanaian cities. Based on experience, such coordination will not materialize until the government of Ghana issues an executive order to do so, including a mechanism for effective coordination and oversight. stakeholders generally agree that ownership of coordination, implementation, and mobilization of budget resources must rest with the local government. Mayors of cities such as Accra and Kumasi have been great advocates of improving urban mobility, although with limited financing and staffing to deliver changes. Also evident is a general consensus that the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) has shown limited commitment to urban mobility in the past. The reasons are related to the lack of capacity and lack of incentives to deliver on this agenda. stakeholders also agree that MLGRD
should not take over the natural functions of other MDAs. Each has its own role to play, and it is primarily a matter of coordination.
Oversight and inter-MDA management should be led by a reconstituted UTAC, which may more appropriately be positioned as the Urban Mobility Advisory Committee (UMAC). It should include a representative from the Office of the President.
Meanwhile, stakeholders created an urban mobility working group in March 2020 that should serve, in the short term, as an interim platform for coordination to create momentum in the transport sector. The group includes key ministries (Transport, Roads and highways, and Local Government and Rural Development), and key local government bodies of Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale. The Ministry of Transport (MoT) will lead the working group meetings at the initial stage, with the intention to transfer responsibility to the MLGRD when that organization is available to lead the discussions efficiently. The working group’s first tasks include: (1) reviewing the CUT Act and the functions of the erstwhile UTAC and other relevant bodies and assessing the potential to reinvigorate the existing institutional and operational frameworks of urban mobility; (2) reviewing and discussing ways to improve the governance of urban mobility; and (3) serving as a platform to inform Country Partnership Framework (CPF) consultations.
Build human capital in specialized skills in urban mobility in MMDAs and MDAs
Capacity building to improve urban mobility is incumbent on all levels of government, and especially so at the local level. since the liberalization of urban public transport in Ghana in the 1960s, the capacity to plan and regulate public transport has been lost. This deficiency has led to the private sector and the tro-tro (minibus) industry stepping in to fill the gap. Capacity building within the civil service and government will enable implementation of interventions to plan, regulate, and manage urban transport. specialized skills in urban mobility planning, public transport operations, and regulations are scarce in Ghana. A survey conducted by the Commonwealth Association of Planners (Currie, Fenner, and harridge 2018) revealed that in 2018 Ghana had less than one planner for every 100,000 persons, thereby limiting the country’s technical capacity to plan and deliver projects. Capacity-building programs should target GAPTE, departments of transport and urban roads, MMDAs, and MoT. MMDAs are especially ill-equipped in the domain of urban mobility because the devolution of urban transport powers has been slow in coming, and when it has finally happened, it has not been supported with sufficient capacity building.
Capacity building in urban mobility should be monitored and supported at the central level. Government should assess the best approach to reinstating units such as the disbanded Centre for Urban Transport, either by reviving CUT or creating a unit within a line ministry (such as MoT or MLGRD) with a similar mandate.
Capacity building of private operators would help to operationalize the regulatory framework of public transport. The government of Ghana should build capacity within the private bus sector to develop professional operators capable of operating a quality public transport network. At the moment, urban public transport operation is largely provided by the privately operated tro-tros. But the disorganized provision of public transport has prompted the government to
rethink its involvement in its provision. In the past, bus services in Ghana were provided by public sector operators using high-capacity vehicles. With the liquidation of the Omnibus services Authority (OsA) in the 1990s, public transport in Ghana was effectively deregulated.
Meanwhile, today’s Ghana national Transport Policy outlines a vision for a better-organized and higher-quality public transport system in all of Ghana’s cities. several interventions have already been undertaken and more are planned on the path to achieving this vision.
Explore further sources of financing for current and capital expenditures
It is important to fully complete decentralization and administrative reforms in order to reorganize financing, establish functional mandates, and transfer human resources to MMDAs. Ghana has set out on an ambitious path to extend the decentralization of urban planning and service delivery management. But decentralization remains ineffective because of prevailing contradictions in the legal framework and the insufficient transfer of human resources and capital to MMDAs. Local governments have expanded their functional assignments, but the corresponding financing and administrative decentralization have not been completed.
The funding of MMDAs’ transport departments and departments of urban roads should be increased to ensure the effective operation of these departments. As MMDAs struggle to fund basic local government activities, transport-related departments at the local level tend to be particularly underfunded, making it difficult to retain qualified staff and supply enough equipment to develop daily data collection. The maintenance of existing facilities and roads is also limited, and departments of urban roads rely on the allocation of central government funding, which entails cumbersome bureaucratic processes, even for minor road maintenance or lighting repairs.
Past experience in Ghana and elsewhere has demonstrated that stable and secure financing is essential for institutions to develop their mandate, especially for those institutions that will play complex coordination roles. GAPTE, for example, relied on funding that depended on the passenger volume of the Amasaman corridor operation. however, financial uncertainty and the financial deficit run up by the Aayalolo bus operation put GAPTE’s sustainability at risk.
The allocation of resources to interjurisdictional schemes could support intergovernmental transfers from the national government to create a robust system of coordination with local governments. As interjurisdictional plans are formulated, their implementation should be coordinated and incentives provided for specific projects as agreed by the local and national governments. such coordination would bring together adjoining assemblies that have common problems and that would benefit from pooled resources and decision-making to rationalize the provision of public goods and services. The proposed recommendations would also serve as a tool in designing and delivering new plans for large agglomerations (such as the Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi areas) and would support effective implementation of existing interjurisdictional plans.
Another recommendation is to explore new sources of financing to respond to major urban mobility requirements in Ghana because investment in the urban sector and existing revenues are falling far short of the needs. The efficiency of the urban system and of urban service delivery is largely influenced
